GREEN BAY, Wis. — He sits in his locker, all 6 feet 5 inches and 247 pounds of him, staring down at his bare feet. This one, Jermichael Finley says. The Green Bay Packers tight end points to the big toe on his right foot.

He can bend it forward. He can’t tilt it up. The first drive of this season, linebacker Patrick Willis fell on Finley’s heel, his toes dorsiflexed and Finley said he tore ligaments. It still hurts, too. Finley admits he’s in a lot of pain.

“I’m not one of the guys that will cry about it,” he said. “It’s a toe. They’re going to have to do more than that to hold me down.”

Especially this season. For two months, Finley, coaches, teammates have been raving about this new mind-set, this treating every mundane drag route in practice with fourth-quarter urgency. He still has proving to do before cashing in on a contract year. But mentally, Finley promises he is approaching the game with a totally different “mind-set.”

The term was repeated constantly though a 15-minute conversation Friday. So far, there has been a long-dormant vigor to Finley’s game. An energy. Exterior factors that contaminated his game before — contract status, hesitation off the knee injury, heckling fans — are ignored.

This year, for Finley, is about a “mind-set.”

“I had to put everything into perspective and just say this is a short window,” said the 26-year-old Finley. “We’re not here for long. I’m just trying to do everything the right way….I’m focused and striving to do the best I can do. And what I do is play tight end.”

He’s been here before. Two years ago, two years younger, he emphasizes, Finley was in a contract year. And off a meniscus tear, he often played tentatively. Into 2012, Finley continued to leave everyone in Wisconsin begging for more. Drops. A buttery September rendered Finley a decoy for a midseason stretch.

Most of his peers wouldn’t mind a two-year stretch of 1,434 receiving yards on 116 receptions with 10 touchdowns. With this athleticism, this talent, it wasn’t enough for him.

So Finley built “a wall” that he says wards off all outside influences. First, he’s not concerned about his expiring contract, about money.

“The money, the fame and all that, it sounds awesome and great. But I have a lot of money right now and it’s no change to my life,” Finley said. “I can buy anything I want, but besides that there’s no change to how I love the game. I still love the game like I was 5 years old playing Pop Warner football. I try to go on the field and go back to my high school days where it’s just pat and go and having fun.

“It’s all about seizing the moment and being a kid. This is a kid’s game.”

Drops can make a kid’s game a maddening one. This time last year, one drop snowballed into another. And another. Inside the stadium, Finley heard the roaring boos, “provocative and crazy things” he’d rather not repeat.

So this wall deflects criticism, too. He doesn’t want 2013 — which has begun with 11 catches for 121 yards and two touchdowns — to torpedo into wild emotional highs and lows.

“You’ve got to build a wall,” Finley said. “One day, they love you. One day, they hate you. That’s the mind-set I’m taking into this thing. If you do well, they’ll love you. If you drop a couple balls, you’re the worst thing since molded bread. It’s the game within the game.”

That’s why Finley bid farewell to Twitter for several months. He’s not listening to critics. Not the ones who yelled “Don’t drop your keys!” to him in public, nor the ones making threats on social media. He stopped clicking that “Mentions” tab.

“I’m living my dream. People living behind computers, they do what they do,” he said. “And I’m going to keep doing what I do and that’s giving them entertainment if they want it.”

Permanent earmuffs directly helps performance, he adds. If he drops one pass, Finley says, “I’m going to come back and catch the next one — I guarantee you.” He senses a tide turning. Many fans already have told him they loved him all along.

After a forward lateral of a drop at San Francisco was intercepted by safety Eric Reid, Finley immediately bounced back. The next time Green Bay had the ball, he began the drive with a 13-yard reception and punctuated it with a 12-yard touchdown.

The next week, he was a one-man locomotive up the left sideline. Finley took a short pass from Aaron Rodgers, shook one defender, lowered his shoulder on another and then ran through Washington’s Bacarri Rambo for 27 yards.

Said Finley, “It’s got to be a mind-set where you say, ‘This guy right here is not going to bring me down.’ That’s my mind-set when I turn up the field and look for who’s about to tackle me.”

Through the hot-potato stretch of 2012, tight ends coach Jerry Fontenot worked with Finley daily. From the sideline, he’d rocket hard passes to the tight end from different angles, and Finley was a vacuum. He rarely dropped anything. He’d cross Oneida Street on Sunday and something changed.

Nerves, maybe. Not having fun, definitely.

Fontenot says Finley is doing a better job of reacting to coverages. He’s looking for the ball on hot routes when he’s supposed to. He’s making the same pre-snap diagnosis as his quarterback. And when Finley has the ball, Fontenot says, he has “the mentality that one guy will not bring him down.”

“If you’re out there having fun and you’re not thinking about things too much,” Fontenot said, “you’re probably going to have a good chance to be successful.”

One person Finley needs on his side is the quarterback, the one who says he’ll pass to the receiver who’s open. Off the field, Finley has been talking with Rodgers more than ever. In the past, they shared a working relationship. They co-existed. There weren’t one-on-one sessions, weren’t casual text messages. That disconnect was worn across Finley’s face after multiple games in 2012.

Both are competitive. And both, Finley says, are “a little sensitive.” Yet as corny as it sounds, the guy throwing the ball should probably be friends with the guy catching it. Midway through last year, Rodgers and Finley began spending time together on Saturday nights reviewing the game plan.

Now, Finley says the two have an “awesome relationship.”

“More than anything as a teammate, there’s more friendship now,” Finley said. “That’s what you need in this game. It’s the chemistry. It’s not the chemistry on the grass. It’s what you do when the coach is not watching and the camera’s not on.

“I’m in a great place right now and it’s just a blessing to be playing with him.”

The bold-faced, all-caps declarations Finley used to make have been in short supply. He still aspires to be the best tight end in the game — why not? But there’s no pressure this contract year, he says. Pressure doesn’t pass through his wall.

Neither will the toe injury. Wearing his go-to Milwaukee snapback — one in rotation with an Arizona Diamondbacks cap — Finley points to the power of adrenaline. That’ll help Sunday at Cincinnati when he could have down-field opportunities against a slower, bulky Bengals linebacker group that averages 262 pounds.

A faction of fans might be rolling their eyes. Finley has claimed to feel liberated in the past. Once, he planned “to freestyle.” This year, it’s “a mind-set.”

But this year, there have been early results, substance. In practice, in games. Jermichael Finley views this all as only the beginning.

“I’m not even where I want to be,” Finley said. “There’s room to improve. I’m excited.”

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